At the present time various particulate combustible materials, such as wood chips, bark, chipped tree tops, wood waste and cotton gin waste, are baled to reduce their volume and to thereby lower transportation costs. The baled material can be stored outside without appreciable deterioration and can be used as fuel, for example, boiler fuel in power plants. Green bark, green chipped tree tops and wet peanut shells dry out rapidly after baling, whereas they do not dry out in loose form in outdoor storage and therefore deteriorate.
A variety of baling presses for compressing material into bales and for automatically tying or strapping the bales are known. In general, these machines comprise a compression chamber in which one or more platens are moved by hydraulic pistons in order to compress the material, together with a tying or strapping mechanism which inserts wires or straps between the bale and each of two opposed platens.